Faceless
by TanuKyle
Summary: Psycho!Naruto. SasuNaru. Sasuke remembers Naruto. Remembers the wild-haired boy with spiky hair and penchant for orange. Naruto remembers nothing, is allowed to remember nothing. This is a story about an impossible love. R R! Rated M for touchy subjects.
1. Chapter 1: Naruto

Fingers drag across the glass, mine are ever-following.

As he steps to the side, I do, too. As blood drips from the biting, ever biting of his fingers, the pain hits me, and crimson globules hit the floor, spraying tinier splashes on the fabric of his white trousers. I say white.

They are no longer white. Scattered blood stains dirty them, some new and fresh, some old and dark, and some which he has tried to scrub out, a faded patch here and there, and threadbare strands that show where he has torn my trousers.

For they are mine, and his. They are not ours. There is not an us. There is him, and me. He and I do not share, he and I steal. One of us for one moment, and then another. He shrieks, but it is my voice that tells him where he is, the words echoing out into the empty room. That he is screaming, and fearful, and wants to go home.

But he can never go home. Not now, not ever. I won't let him. Neither can I. He won't let me. I miss them, sometimes. He doesn't. He only misses the fibrous feel of their flesh as is tears. But I miss them. I don't remember them, but I miss them. He remembers everyone, and he taunts me with his knowledge.

I cannot remember anyone, they are all shadowy figures with monotone voices and holes for eyes and mouth. He remembers each person, and how they looked with tattered mouths, and carved-out eyes. He speaks again, as the boy enters, in a lower tone this time, in the voice I have come to remember, though his features escape me

. "Avete occhi graziosi, il mio caro. Li darete io?" "You have pretty eyes, my dear…give them to me?"

He speaks Italian. I speak English, but even I have come to know this phrase. I weep,

but tears appear on his body, even as he raises the knife. It is the phrase he uses when he is tired of them, the ones I can remember. I can only see them one person at a time.

I will be on the train, the street, the house, and then I will see a face, and I will know.

That is them.

He will know too. He marks them for killing. I mark them for love. One day I dream that I will cast him out. He dreams the same thing in reverse, that he will cast me out, that he will be able to kill unrestrained by my desires.

I dream that I can love, without dooming them. For that's what I do. I doom them to him. Just as long ago, someone did to me. If they survive, that is. Most of the time he kills them, even if the knife does not. He wipes the knife in the boys mouth, spreading himself in the form of his cocktail of chemicals, onto the child. And as he takes root, the boy splutters and chokes, as he causes the boy to foam and the mouth, to writhe.

Now it is I who is stealing the moment, stroking his hair, cooing to the boy softly, the boy with brown hair, and red tattoos on his face, and he is slowing, becoming more peaceful, and his face is going, the blackness is enveloping him, and I smile. He is at peace. They are all at peace, the faceless ones.

The faces are not. He knows this, and this is why he lets me love them first. The faceless that move around are not always at peace. Sometimes I will catch glimpses of their faces, a nose, a cheekbone. The facelesses that are still are always at peace. But they are inconsequential. It is not them who matter. It is the faces. He knows this, I know this. It is the one time he and I are in agreement. They must go.

I beat him once. The boys' face disappeared before he could kill him. I made him at peace, happy, content. And then I told him to run, and he wouldn't. I showed him the other. He ran. I still remember one thing about him. He had soft hands. He remembers nothing, swears he doesn't exist, that I am deluding myself.

But I know it is the other way around, that he is deluded, that he existed, and he cannot bear it. I smile, and put the boy on my back. He is the face that got away. A name flutters through my mind. Sasuke. I clutch at it, but He rips it away.

He howls, but my body is strong now, and I am in control. The boy must be burnt. Fire is happy. It has no face. And so I lug him to the pile, my pile. There are two piles, but my pile is bigger. He almost always loses here. But there are two on his pile, and I care not for them. They were never at peace, so I killed them. Even when he stabbed them, they survived, and their faces would not go. They would not go! That is what he does to you. He stays your face. I bring a hand up to my face, and I shudder.

Then I reprimand myself. It is not my day. It is certainly not his day. It is the boy's day. I smile, and he howls again, trapped by love. I like that. It sounds like a song. He is trapped by lo~ove.

And I am then humming, a tune forming in my mind, as the fire licks and leaves ashes, and I brush them to the pile, and replace the old drum over it, so they do not blow away. He fights to wrest control, but the boy helps me keep it, faceless visage full of peace, even as it slips away, as I forget.

He laughs, and walks back to the house. And now I am following again, ever following, forced to mimic his movements, one by one. He is not me. A face said that once. A face who headed to his pile. She, for I remember that much, said that he was exactly the same as me. That he and I were a we.

Another name. Sakura.

That we are one … That is not right. Maybe that's why she never got faceless, because she was always wrong. He grins, licking the blood of his fingers, and I shudder as the metallic taste rings in my mouth.

I wrest control, barely. I don't want this.

But I cannot leave him to hurt the facelesses. They're so beautiful, so at peace.

Even the flickerers, the ones whose full faces appear temporarily. I follow them, to check they aren't a face. But they never are. There face soon disappears.

Sometimes it takes months, others years, but they go. I know this. I know as soon as I see them they aren't faces.

They don't look so…broken.

More names flick through my mind. Facelesses, I am sure of that. None of them survived. They are all dead. But who can stand against… Another name flicks through my mind. Kyuubi. I blink. He has a name? Then surely I have a na-

"Naruto." I can almost hear Sasuke's voice.

And then He steals my memories away again, and I remember nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

"Naruto."

I sigh, running a hand through black hair, spiked carefully at the back. I miss him.

The blond -haired man, who seemed so vacant. I mean, I know he's crazy…but you can't help loving him.

I lay eyes upon my psychiatrist, though I feel like these visits are essentially useless.

I am…happy. I miss Naruto, I do.

I miss his blond hair, his scarred face, and the childish exuberance of when he found something,

Ihis penchant for orange, I even miss that, and of course his weird expressions.

"You are losing your face!"

he would say when I smiled, and I stopped, and he would frown.

"Oh. You have found it again." His voice was so sad in these moments,

that I soon learned to smile often. But fake smiles did not work.

It had to be true happiness. But around Naruto, no,

around the one person who ever meant that much to me, that was easy enough.

And he taught me so many things. He taught how to get up, how to keep going.

How to be essentially, effortlessly happy. I gathered, from my time with him,

that he had had a worse time of it than me, but yet he would smile effortlessly, easily.

Once, I tried his saying back to him. "You are losing your face."

I said, at one particularly adorable moment. He smiled sadly.

"I can never lose my face. I am bound." He never elaborated on that.

But I gathered losing your face was the best thing that could happen to someone.

I love him. I just wish I'd realised that earlier.

"Kyuubi."

Says Kakashi, or Hatake as he insists I call him. My psychiatrist, though he looks crazier than me,

with wild silver hair, and a scarred, bloodshot eye. Mind you…

I finger one of the many scars that litter my body, everyone has scars nowadays.

Life tries to go on as normal, but tensions between the factions are increasing.

I'm sure you've heard of them. Fire, Water, Wind. 'countries' of the world we live in.

And then, then there are the cesspits of the factions, the hidden villages. Laboratories basically.

Laboratories where monstrosities are formed.

Laboratories where they mess with the ether, chakra if you will, that permeates life.

My seal throbs, and I wince.

Hatake eyes me. "You seem distracted, Sasuke." I shrug, deliberately keeping relaxed in a non-confrontational manner.

Naruto taught me many ways to defuse a situation. That was one of them. "I've got things on my mind."

Kakashi leans forward, steepling his fingers. His red, bloodshot eye tries to focus on me as well as his other, more natural eye.

"Sasuke. You cannot fix Naruto on your own. Kyuubi is too strong. He needs help. If you know where he is, Sasuke, you need to bring him in."

I nod, but my face betrays nothing of the turmoil underneath.

How could I bring him in, knowing I was damning him to a psycho ward, or tied up in straitjackets, or having drugs shot into him.

If he was crazy, if he is crazy, then so am I for loving him. His secret..I cannot betray it. No, when he showed my Kyuubi's seal,

I knew then. I ran, at the time. Ran crying and screaming. I will regret that tear on Naruto's face till the day I die.

Or visit him. The two are not mutually exclusive of course. In fact, the second probably guarantees the first.

But that seal…how did it get there? I am walking now, tugging my coat further around me.

Open shirts look good, especially when they are a deep blue with a purple trim, but damn if they aren't cold.

Tight-fitting trousers catch the eyes of a few ladies, and even a man as I walk past. But they hold no interest for me.

No, what interests me lies in the Uchicha complex, my family home, where the Hokage, left an important document.

A document, on how to trap a demon. How to give a child unnatural power, how to make him invisible, unstoppable,

how to make him strong and powerful, how to make him better. I raise a hand to my seal, that spreads over my neck slightly as I think about it.

Am I a demon-child? Am I a monstrosity? With Sharingan eyes, and a seal that hums of chakra, am I a demon? Am I a demon like Kyuubi?

I shudder, and force my thoughts away from the seal., and the scientist who put it on me.

Later, I study. Reading, Understanding.

Learning. I need to know. Need to know how to separate Kyuubi from Naruto, to keep the man I love alive.

But I'm so tired. So very tired. And as my eyes shut, for only a second, I fall asleep, if you can call it that.

For sleep is restful, a black warmth. This is far from it.

Sleep is where demons lie. And yet, I look forward to it, peversely.

Each time I sleep, his face flickers into view, the tanned body I knew so well curving round an imaginary circle,

arms over his head, hunched round in that posture I know so well, that fearful sleep, as if expecting any minute to be attacked.

And from the numerous scars littering his body, I wondered if it were true. Rips, tears, burns, the scars spoke of horrors.

But in my dreams, it's okay. I can walk forward, and touch him. I can caress his blond hair, and nuzzle the scarred cheeks.

And I can smell his wonderful scent, and breathe in the very essence of him.

And for five minutes, it's all okay.

Until he wakes up.


End file.
